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Lansing, Mich.— A Detroit-area mobile strategies agency will transition its applications and services to Lansing-based information technology company, i2Integration. The transition comes after the unexpected death of Mousetrap's founder and president, Greg Nasto.

“To ensure that Greg’s dream lives on and our service continues, we have been working closely with i2Integration,” said Jessica MacConaghy, Mousetrap Mobile’s former project manager. “i2 has been working with associations for 20 years, so we knew they have the means, capability and experience to take this on quickly. We also felt strongly that i2 has the standards and morals that reflected our own, so we were very confident that this was a great fit to move forward.”

John Forsberg, CEO of i2Integration, was introduced to Nasto through the tight-knit association community.

"I got to see over the years how he and his staff built a hard-earned reputation for their work and responsiveness," Forsberg said. "Our mission now is to continue that level of excellence.”

In the months ahead, i2Integration will complete the various projects in-progress for the association conference season.

Forsberg said i2 will begin to gather feedback from its new clients, evaluate the various mobile applications and begin to lay out plans for improvement and expansions for 2017.

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Automaker Partners with i2Integration on Mobile App Integration

i2Integration is helping Ford Motor Co. expand the connected car on a global scale, and setting the stage for a growing presence in developer program creation and management.

As the technology company behind the digital assets in the Ford Developer Program, the Lansing-based web and application developer is playing a key role in establishing the Detroit automaker as the leader in integrating mobile apps with vehicles.

i2Integration provides technology support for both developer and consumer facing resources within the Ford Developer Program for AppLink which is the Ford product built upon the open-source SmartDeviceLink (SDL) platform.

"Other automakers are picking up Ford's open source architecture," said Scott Burnell, who heads the Ford program. "This is a brand-new world for a very old industry, and it's going to grow -- exponentially.”

Right now, some 15,000 developers are part of the FordDev Program, from Pandora and Major League Baseball to one-person shops that span nearly 100 countries.

"What we really like about having i2Integration on board is, we’re a global company but we're still where the entire automotive industry began, in Michigan," Burnell said. "It's great to have a Michigan company working alongside us that can work at a global level."

For i2Integration, that global capability includes developing, establishing and managing systems, content and mobile apps for the development program in key locations worldwide, with each installation tailored for speed, reliability and accessibility.

“Our team is at the forefront of what is truly a transformation of the automotive and mobile app industries and the growth of the 'Internet of Things,'" said John Forsberg, CEO of i2Integration. “We're proud to be a key component in Ford’s lead in that transformation.

“There's also a real and growing need for industries to integrate their products with independent mobile app developers worldwide, whether that's retail, automotive, b2b or healthcare. i2Integration is perfectly positioned to support that need, and that is extremely exciting for us.”

5 Solid Reasons to Choose i2Integration for your Web, Mobile and Application Design and Development in Lansing

1. We’re local.

We’ve been in Lansing since before we were born (really, our parents lived here). And we’re staying. Located in Delta Township, we’re 5 minutes from downtown, which means we’re not just a voice on the phone. We can also put a face to the voice, providing you on-site attention in short order.

2. We’re trusted.

By whom? Here’s a few in the Greater Lansing area:

Jackson National Life

Sparrow Health System

Consumers Mutual Insurance of Michigan

DeWitt Township

Michigan Society of Association Executives

Michigan Manufacturers Association

Michigan Association of School Boards

Physicians Health Plan of Mid-Michigan

City of Lansing

Lansing Board of Water and Light

3. We’re experienced.

From website design to mobile and custom application development -- if it touches the web, we have designed, built and supported it for organizations all over Lansing and mid-Michigan since 1994. A few project examples:

4. We’re different.

Different in a good way. We’re not a graphics firm. We’re not a marketing firm. We’re the guys those guys turn to when you need to build something complex. Example?

When you need a website to integrate with your CRM or email marketing system

When you need single sign-on between your CMS and another system

When you need a custom application that pushes and pulls data from your internal legacy systems

When you need to track the engagement of your client or members between your website and various third-party systems

When you need a mobile application that involves geolocation tracking

5. We’re invested in the community.

CEO John Forsberg is a former board member of the Michigan Society of Association Executives and has given talks to the Capital Area Career Center, The Explorers Club and various associations and colleges. Mark Stiles, Director of Sales, is a lifelong Lansing resident and keeps i2Integration engaged in the community by serving as a Lansing Regional Chamber ambassador, member of the development council for WKAR and as a guest speaker at marketing, mobile and tech startup conferences around the area.

If you’re looking for a Lansing-based company for website, mobile and application development… look to us!

Mobile Design: Don’t Sign the Contract Until You Read This

Your association’s most recent member survey has resulted in a mandate: your website has to become mobile friendly. Now, don’t make that face; going mobile is the best thing an organization can do for its members these days.

Here are some things to consider when looking to go mobile:

Are you using a Content Management System (CMS)? If you are, and it’s something like Drupal, WordPress or DNN, say, then you are looking at potentially just creating a new theme that is mobile-friendly. All your content is there, you’re just having us create a new front end. Doing it that way could save some cost, both on our end and yours.

If your site isn’t in a CMS or something proprietary, you might run into issues. There are systems out there that combine a CMS with the association management system, and with some of those, you might be locked into a design that is not mobile-friendly. Bottom line: the technology your site is currently using is extremely important in determining whether a re-design for mobile is possible.

Your content: Is it clean? This has to do with the time it will take to make your site mobile friendly, and ultimately, the cost. And what clean means is if your site uses lots of tables and lots of “in-line code,” meaning forced font sizes and styles, all of that is going to need to be “cleaned” for mobile devices. What was fancy and appealing when your website was initially designed for displaying on a desktop is just plain messy for mobile use. And if there’s a lot this messily formatted content, you’re talking some additional time and expense in getting the content prepped for mobile.

Navigation: How complex/deep is your site now, and how complex/ deep does it need to be for mobile? With menus on mobile devices, you’ve typically got a scrolling list view of pages. If your site is four levels deep, it can make navigating a real problem on a mobile device. The more levels, the tougher it is for users to navigate. And with every extra click a user has to make to get somewhere on your site, the likelier it will be that they will give up. “Flattening” the navigation (less layers) and consolidating pages will help make navigation easier and more efficient on a mobile device.

Landing pages: With mobile, it’s all about consolidated content, creating landing pages that serve as launching pads to common content (pages that get the most traffic), so you’re not forcing your users to hunt for it.

The days of flashy websites are, for better or worse, coming to an end as more and more people use mobile devices for everything they do online. A simplified look and optimized content presentation is key. With mobile devices, you only have so much screen real estate and often, limited bandwidth; anything that is not needed by your users should be eliminated.

In our next post, we’ll clear up the mysteries of single sign-on.

Mobile Website App or a True App? Which is right for you.

Sometimes clients come to us saying they want to develop a mobile app, when in fact what they might actually need is a mobile website app.

What’s the difference between the two? A true app (think of those icons on your smartphone) is an application built specifically for a mobile operating system such as Apple, Android or Windows. A mobile website app is a browser-based application (think Survey Monkey, Constant Contact or Google Analytics) that can run on a mobile device, or on the desktop.

The development and maintenance costs between these two methods are stark. It’s much less costly to create a mobile website app because you are creating it once and it runs off the browser, so it doesn’t matter what type of phone users have. If you are creating a true app, then you have to build one for Apple, one for Android and one for Windows if you want them to run on all three phones. Some functions can carry over, but a lot of them do not.

So, how do you choose which method? It depends on the functionality requirements of the app.

For example, let’s say you’ve got a member directory and you want to be able to search it and display the results on a mobile device. The solution could be either a mobile website app or a true mobile app. But if you also want to be able to do that same search when you are not online, or find a member who is close by based on their current GPS location, now you’re talking a true mobile app.

There are tools available that can (somewhat) blend these two approaches, allowing us to create a mobile website app that also integrates with some features on the phone. But, there are caveats. If it’s something simple like submitting a form with a couple photos, yes, but anything much more complex than that you can run into problems.

What’s the cost difference between a website mobile app and a true app?

Developing a simple website mobile app could cost as little as 5-10K. If we’re building a true app that needs to run on multiple platforms (Apple, Androids, etc.), the cost could easily begin at 40K and go up from there. Also, remember that with a true mobile app there are operating system updates to keep up with as Apple, Android and Windows update their phones. Our research says to plan for 10 percent of your project cost for updating a true mobile app annually.

Both methods have their advantages. The key to finding the right method at the right cost is to talk to developers like us. We can help get you there!

The results are in for the ORGPRO 2017 mobile app! i2Integration - the creator of the event mobile app found:

69%: of event attendees registered on the mobile app

12,882: mobile app views during ORGPRO 2017

Exhibitor Bingo: The #2 most viewed featured on the app (even ahead of the Agenda listing!)

63%: the percentage of iOS users versus Android users

"Our members were comfortable using the app to select their sessions, locate the rooms for those sessions, and use the gamification feature to meet sponsors. As an added benefit, we were able to reduce the amount of paper distributed and wasted during the event. Thank you i2Ingegration for creating an app that made MSAE shine. I know you will do so for our members too."
- Cheryl Ronk, CAE, CMP, President, Michigan Society of Association Executives

From a laptop in the lobby or a cell phone in the coat room - quite literally the day of the event - you can modify content that will be instantly distributed out to your apps for Apple and Android phones using with the recent release of i2Integration's new generation of mobile apps for associations. Just as important: you don't need to be a computer geek. If you know how to use Microsoft Word, you're set.

For more information about i2Integration's mobile event app, click here.

It’s time to go “Mobile First”

According to industry reports, 60 percent of total digital media time spent from 2013 to 2014 was done from a mobile device. And that’s only going to increase. To effectively reach this audience, it’s time to start thinking about moving your website away from a Desktop First approach, and over to a Mobile First approach.

Traditionally, a website was built with its priority toward displaying on a desktop computer, where it could then be scaled down for use on a mobile device. That’s called “graceful degradation.”

That’s worked just fine for several years, but with that 60 percent number climbin, that method isn’t going to cut it anymore.

With your audience primarily using mobile, you should be designing for Mobile First. With this method, your site is designed for mobile use primarily, then can be scaled upward to the desktop. That’s called “progressive enhancement.”

We’re starting to see our clients and their needs going more toward this Mobile First philosophy, and that changes everything: how you look at navigation, how you look at prioritizing the content structure and the overall graphic design of the site.

Navigation, in the traditional Desktop First version, has tons of options: think pull-downs, subpages and deep, deep navigation menus. You can’t do that with Mobile First; what you need are fewer options that get people where they’re going in as few touches as possible. This can be done by creating more landing pages, for example, but the navigation menu itself should have very few choices.

Graphic design, if you are going Mobile First, means getting rid of the extraneous: flashy graphics and fluffy content have no place -- it will be ignored or even worse, drive users away. You have limited bandwidth and limited screen real estate to work with. Mobile First is all about action and content: content that is short and concise, and action that should be easy to get to and prominent (think register, sign up and purchase here).

It sounds easy to say Mobile First, but it truly is a complete mindshift. In some ways, it’s almost a throwback to the days when we first started (21 years ago) and the web was young. Back then you had very little bandwidth and small monitors that affected how you designed a website. Same thing today when it comes to mobile. The only difference now is that we can do far cooler stuff within the same limitations than we ever thought possible back then.

Maybe a better of way of saying it is it’s Back to the Future for all of us.

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